Tessa calls him “my monster”: the man who, 18 years earlier, left her in a shallow grave with a corpse and a collection of bones, beneath a Texan field; the man who, to all intents and purposes, is now on death row, awaiting his imminent execution. Her testimony put Terrell Darcy Goodwin in jail almost two decades ago, so who has been planting clumps of black-eyed susans, the yellow American wildflowers that carpeted her “grave”, at her house ever since?
Julia Heaberlin’s third novel is told by Tessie (as she’s known when she’s a teenager), trying to come to terms with the 32 hours she can’t remember – “The things I do remember, I’d rather not. Four freckles. Eyes that aren’t black but blue, wide open, two inches from mine” – and by Tessa (as an adult), with a teenage daughter of her own. It’s a fairytale of a thriller, stalked by monsters and by the ghosts of the Susans – the dead girls – who still talk to Tessa.
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